Canon 250D vs Canon 500D close up lenses? (vs Raynox 250)

gardenersassistant wrote:

Peter in Canberra wrote:

BBbuilder467 wrote:

Peter in Canberra wrote:

I have read that the Canon 500D close up lens is suited to long focal length lenses while the 250D to shorter lenses.

I am contemplating trying to add one to the Nikon AF-P 70-300 DX VR lens (58mm thread)
I am watching a 250D 58mm and a 500d 52mm for sale.

Wondering if the focal length recommendation makes the 250D not a good pairing.

The 52mm one could be fitted with a 58-52 step down ring, which I guess could remain attached to the 500D lens.

Thoughts gratefully accepted.

The use scenario would be larger insects / spiders where some shortening of the focus distance of the telephoto and some magnification would be nice, and hopefully retaining some depth of field.
I already have a macro lens (the 85 VR micro) which I use for small insects / spiders with some success (by my standards anyway )

The Raynox 250 clip on lens has also been suggested but that seems to get mixed reviews.

If you just want to reduce the working distance and gain some magnification, that's what the 500D would do. I always liked the +2 diopter with a similar focal length zoom. I think it's better suited to flowers and nature subjects than insects. It was hard to get really shallow dof with the slow zoom.

thanks. The insects / spiders I had in mind are larger ones - I had a large moth in the house a few months ago and the macro lens gave (predictably) very little depth of field, and my other lenses I couldn't get close enough. It was also in a fairly inaccessible spot on a ceiling ...
Huntsman spiders are another 'target' where I'm trying to get a bit more magnification.e

Am I right in thinking the reason you want to use a close-up lens is so you can get greater depth of field than when using a macro lens? If so, I don't think it will. In fact, depending on the magnification you can get greater depth of field using a macro lens than you can using a close-up lens on a telezoom lens. Happy to explain if you are interested.

thanks but no - when I use the actual macro lens I know I stuck with shallow depth of field even with small apertures. So sometimes, that lens is not the right tool if I want to try to get a (single*) image with more depth of field. (*I've never tried focus stacking. For opportunistic shooting of live specimens I suspect this would be tricky - the subjects move :-)) (I hadn't contemplated putting an achromat on the macro lens as I had assumed it would result in very shallow depth of field).

If I put on a longer zoom (I've got a Nikon AF-P 70-300 DX and a G1 Tamron 70-200) I find I don't get enough magnification given the minimum focussing distances in play.

A specific situation where I was trying different lenses and none of them gave me quite what I wanted was a few months ago when I had a large Bogong moth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogong_moth ) on ceiling of my toilet. Close confines and lots of contortions either trying to get close enough (macro lens) or far enough away (long zooms).
I was hoping that an achromat on the end of the 70-300 might give the shortened focusing distance and maybe also more (relatively) depth of field than the 85 micro.
Maybe that isn't going to work, as I recall years ago when all I had as an 18-55 and an 18-200 and tried a Canon 500D on the 18-200 - I could get closer and some more magnification but depth of field was shallow and there was also a narrow window for when focus could be achieved at all.
Maybe another option is one of those zooms billed as 'macro' but are really 2:1 or 3:1 for such situations.